Wood That Shimmers Like Gold, "Mined" Underground

Ancient Kauri Whitebait

Wood is derived only from trees. One of the great ecological quandaries we face is that trees are essential for a healthy environment, yet we feel a need to harvest and kill trees for the wood. The end results are often a lifeless field where once a forest thrived, the loss of woodland creatures, and no shade for our picnic. We want the wood for building houses and manufacturing furniture and other products -- tables, floors, boxes, etc. In addition to wanting the wood for its hardiness, it has beautiful characteristics once it is sanded, stained, and polished. Each wood product can become a work of art. In the United States and Europe, familiar trees have always been ones such as oak, maple, elm, pine, etc. You know it's common if a nearby street bears the name of one of these varieties. Once trade and commerce expanded, trees from other areas were found to be hardy and beautiful -- such as teak from Asia and mahogany from Latin America. But there is a type of wood that is unlike any other wood in the world. When it is sanded, stained, and polished, it actually shimmers like gold metal. But even more amazing is that harvesting the trees that supply the wood has no impact at all on the environment. No forests are decimated; no animals are affected; no living thing is killed. Finally, this wood can be up to 50,000 years old. Petrified wood? No; petrified wood is the result of permineralization -- minerals replace all the organic materials of trees. Wood does not come from rocks. Check out the first sentence of this blog entry. Ancient Kauri When humans first came to New Zealand (the Maoris, about 700 years ago), the first thing they did was kill all the moas (large flightless birds). When Europeans first came to New Zealand (the British, about 300 years ago), there weren't any more moas, so the first thing they did was try to cut down all the kauris. The kauri tree is one of the largest trees in the world -- some growing as high as a 20-story building. Since none of the moas had any arms to cut them down, vast forests of these trees ranged unmolested throughout the northern island for many thousands of years. However, they had been so over-harvested in the past couple hundred years that the NZ Government finally declared them endangered, and they are now protected from loggers. Ok, so why am I telling you about some trees that are no longer available for wood? And what about eco-friendliness, and the gold? Here is the story: In the 1970's some farmers were draining and digging some swampy peat bogs when they came across an amazing discovery. Beneath the bog layers were found enormous tree trunks. Subsequent studies revealed that between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago, many huge kauri trees -- some as old as 2,000 years -- fell in a swamp-like area. Instead of rotting away, they were covered by dirt and water, and eventually were sealed in by top layers of peat. Now when they are extracted (see the video below), they are completely intact. Some of the trunks have a girth of up to 40 feet around, and 20 feet thick. Although many specimens have been broken, or need to be cut in order to extract them, some still retain sections over 40 feet long. Once a tree has been removed from the ground, the hole is filled in and there is no change in the environment. The Ancient Kauri wood is strong and as workable as most other woods, despite its age. In fact, its strange history has given it one other unique quality: Along with the water that had seeped in over the millennia, some ground minerals also found their way into the grain -- not to replace the organic material, but to supplement it. Now, when the wood is processed and polished, it has a metallic shimmer that resembles gold or brass.

The supply of Ancient Kauri wood is obviously limited, but no one really knows how much was buried over the thousands of years of preservation. On the other hand, I feel I can say with certainty that you will not be able to go to New Zealand and order any southern fried moa.